i asked your name, you asked the time
by starinhercorner
Summary: "Zatanna clenches her fist around the charm, feeling all its subtle edges in her flesh." Post-"Endgame."


She doesn't know how she wakes up with Artemis's hair in her eyes, just that pulling it out makes her blink back tears. It hangs from her fingertips as a sliver of light, save for spots of black from where it caught between her coated lashes. Mascara rubs off on her skin in flecks. She can taste her own lipstick, thick and dry and somewhat spicy on her tongue; her whole mouth feels as raw and stinging as a chemical burn. She pops the tip of her tongue out from between her lips as another hair slides off her teeth, making its presence known.

Something pulls at her blouse from the left, threatening to undo the only two buttons still buttoned. It's Artemis's fist. The fabric crinkles in her tightening grip. _Oh._ Zatanna eyes the woman crashed next to her on the floor and sees the very color she's been tasting smeared into her skin, tinging the corners of her mouth and running down her throat in a line of lip prints and splotches. _Oh, shit._

The glamour charm is tangled up in strands of blonde hair, its black strap torn and frayed at the edges.

Artemis pulls harder at the opening of Zatanna's shirt, reaching fingers out and drawing pink lines across her breast with her nails. They're only the freshest of many, Zatanna realizes as a tingle starts up in her back and runs down her spine in criss-crossing lines. Zatanna pulls her shirt closed and Artemis whimpers softly, baring teeth like an injured animal. They're all yellowed and dull, just as her lips seem to drain into the color of her skin and the bags under her eyes dye it purple and blue. Her brow tenses. Zatanna slams her hand down on the charm like it's an insect and frees it from Artemis hair just as Artemis rolls onto her back, bra unhooked and sitting limply atop her chest.

Artemis's eyes blink open cautiously, and there's a crease in her forehead that could very well be a dent in her skull for all the anguish that shows in her face. Zatanna clenches her fist around the charm, feeling all its subtle edges in her flesh.

"Anyone ever tell you you shed like a cat?" Artemis's eyes dart over to Zatanna, and Zatanna presses her lips into a smirk like she's putting pressure on a wound. It's no good, judging by the lack of change in Artemis's face. The wound's as open as it was before last night, as open as it's been for almost two months now, and the rest of Artemis is just as closed.

Artemis doesn't say a word, just fires a look into Zatanna's eyes with impeccable speed and accuracy then sits up. Her hair pools on either side of her neck, and her bra hangs on by one shoulder and one shoulder alone. Her eyes meet the distance with an intensity that could pierce through dimensions, look into other worlds; and Zatanna knows it's because what she's looking for is no longer in this one, but can't help but think that she looks like a goddess. Having channeled one not too long ago, Zatanna would know.

Looks aren't a comfort, though, as Artemis makes it onto her feet and starts the search for her clothes.

"Artemis!" Zatanna pushes herself up from the floor and adjusts her crooked panties, pulls her stockings back up to the waist. She's onto her fourth button by the time Artemis is dressed in all the black she arrived in, head to toe, too heavy and dark for late August. Her hands go still as Artemis's hand stops on the doorknob.

"Artemis was never here." The voice is a weak rasp but the comparative silence carries it faithfully across the room. Right then and there the words simmer on Zatanna's tongue, in Zatanna's bones—"_Simetra_" and "_T'nod Evael_"—but there's something in the straightness of Artemis's spine and the hard face cleared of any trace of Zatanna's lips that makes her think she needs to take the other woman's word for it. There's something in her hand that tells her whatever she tries will never work.

Artemis is halfway through the doorframe when she turns to face the inside of Zatanna's apartment again. "He was right." She stares down at the carpet, and Zatanna knows the burns on both their bodies will last for days, and then without a single word they will disappear. "About..." She bites a clean lip. Zatanna grits her teeth. "Yeah."

The door closes with no magnificence. Zatanna wants to shout until the wood catches fire, but it's too late for her to let Artemis go with a flourish, so she sets herself down easy onto the sofa. She sweeps a large mass of black hair back over her head, still feeling fingers cling to its roots and hide there, not daring to run past the limits of the illusion. She can still feel the lips pecking her cheeks in constellation patterns foreign to her but all too familiar to Artemis, so much so that she could find them with her eyes closed. It's a sick feeling, like she's filled the role completely, down to every last triple cheesburger and every continent crossed in seconds. Her stomach lurches. Her head spins.

Zatanna runs a thumb over the gold pendant's slick surface and watches the sweat left on her fingertips make it glisten. She remembers—even through the fever she caught in Artemis's breath, and perhaps the memory is heightened in her senses because of it—tearing the necklace from her own neck the moment Artemis moaned the wrong name into the kiss.

She could swear Artemis had opened her eyes between then and now and only kissed her harder. But there's a reason Zatanna hadn't called her out on self-delusion before pulling the necklace tight and clasping it shut.


End file.
